Alberto Cappellaro
banner
albertok.bsky.social
Alberto Cappellaro
@albertok.bsky.social
Husband & Dad 💛💚 | Teaching Maths and Physics | Formerly a Theoretical Physicist 📝| Social democracy 🌹

Back in Padova and Treviso, previously a proud member of the Lemeshko group at ISTA.
Pinned
There’s some exciting research news on my end—our latest preprint is available online (and to be published soon)!

Most of this work has been carried on in the group of @lemeshko.bsky.social at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria 🇦🇹 #Quantum #SciComm 🧪⚛️🧑‍🔬

1/n

arxiv.org/abs/2501.16066
Environment-limited transfer of angular momentum in Bose liquids
Impurity motion in a many-body environment has been a central issue in the field of low-temperature physics for decades. In bosonic quantum fluids, the onset of a drag force experienced by point-like ...
arxiv.org
The second von der Leyden's term continues to be an unmitigated disaster on all fronts...
This would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

I've only looked at the "simplification" rules for data protection and they seem to be written by someone who doesn't understand the regulations in the first place.

It's not about disagreeing, irrespective of goals they're incompetent. 🧵
In 2026 will continue simplifying ↓

Over a half of our legislative proposals will focus on making EU laws easier to apply and implement faster.
November 10, 2025 at 10:52 AM
A case of terminally centrist brain at the FT. Terminally in the sense that such advices has plunged Labour into an almost irreversible crisis... Zombie party.
the Greens surge on an affordability crisis platform, Labour government bleeding support for embracing New Labour, and Martin Wolf's advice: stay New Labour

www.ft.com/content/b88e...
The disturbing victory of Old Labour over New Labour
In education, labour and housing we risk going back towards what we know will not work
www.ft.com
November 10, 2025 at 10:34 AM
Reposted by Alberto Cappellaro
Stop overhyping AI, scientists tell von der Leyen
Stop overhyping AI, scientists tell von der Leyen
Open letter criticises the Commission President for remarks earlier this year – when she anticipated AI would “approach human reasoning” in 2026
dlvr.it
November 10, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Reposted by Alberto Cappellaro
The same day Elon Musk claimed that Tesla would have a flying car next year (?), SpaceX hypeguy and editor of Ars Technica(wtf???) Eric Berger uncritically promoted a Musk 'Data Center in Space' scam that defies everything that is known about thermodynamics and newtonian physics
October 31, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Another example of the political and ideological bankruptcy of the Labour under Starmer.

Honestly, i cannot see how this party can survive the next election cycles in its current form. A zombie party.
November 1, 2025 at 11:58 AM
Very important point.
Let me try to answer this...

To be a scientist means to assume that there is more good than evil in the world, for why would you dedicate your life to inventing tools that will surely end up in bad people's hands as well? 🧵
October 29, 2025 at 1:39 PM
One of the best episodes ever, with @adambecker.bsky.social discussing all the sloppy pseudo-science tech bros love to talk about. As explained here, they're usually dumb as hell, or in blatant bad faith.
September 27, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Alberto Cappellaro
Here’s this week’s Better Offline. I’m joined in studio by astrophysicist @adambecker.bsky.social to talk about his new book More Everything Forever, the BS AGI story, why we should ignore Eliezer Yudkowsky, and why billionaires love LLMs.

www.iheart.com/podcast/1119...
Linktr.ee/betteroffline
Radio Better Offline: Adam Becker - Better Offline | iHeart
<p>Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York city.<br><br>Ed Zitron is joined in studio by astrophysicist Adam Becker to talk about his n...
www.iheart.com
September 24, 2025 at 4:11 AM
Reposted by Alberto Cappellaro
Congratulations to Italian energy company Eni for its $1 billion of brand new fusion-generated electricity
Companies Keep Buying Future Fusion Power That Definitely, For Sure, Absolutely Will Exist
Hello, welcome to my relaunched newsletter, read more about the deal here and please subscribe! The Italian oil and gas giant Eni announced an agreement on Monday to buy electricity "worth more than ...
www.gravityisgone.com
September 22, 2025 at 3:55 PM
I'm feeling breathless, all the most deranged features of our society coalescing around the genocide unfolding in Gaza, and these fu***ng people talk about "real estate gold mines".

Infuriating and deeply terrifying, which (I guess) is one of their point.
September 18, 2025 at 6:20 AM
We live in the darkest (but dumbest) timeline. Solidarity to US colleagues enduring this vile harassment campaign 🌹
Elon sharing the name of 66 random not-famous people to his many millions of followers because this person said they said things she didn’t like about Charlie Kirk.

I erased the names and employers from the screenshot but you can see their jobs. Nurses, teachers etc.
September 15, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Great points made below, if one aims to talk about quantum computing in a not-misleading way!
It's 2025 and we're still doing this, huh?
September 13, 2025 at 3:06 PM
It is a camp system, so these abuses happen by design.
wired.com WIRED @wired.com · Aug 19
As of late last month, the investigation—led by US senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat of Georgia—had unearthed 41 cases of physical and sexual abuse; 14 involving pregnant detainees and 18 involving children.
Senate Probe Uncovers Allegations of Widespread Abuse in ICE Custody
Led by US senator Jon Ossoff, the investigation cites hundreds of reports since January, including accounts of miscarriages, child neglect, and sexual abuse at ICE detention centers in dozens of state...
www.wired.com
August 20, 2025 at 5:31 PM
GPT-whatever is coming
A now-deleted GitHub blog post reveals GPT-5, available as gpt-5, gpt-5-mini, gpt-5-nano, and gpt-5-chat with "major improvements" in reasoning, code, and more (Tom Warren/The Verge)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink
August 7, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Maybe not the point but here we are, ranking unis based on "free speech" (whatever this means in 2025). It is baffling that these rankings are still taken seriously, after many years of poking holes in their complete arbitrary metrics. Most of them are just spreadsheet-based magical thinking.
i think the real, good faith criticism of FIRE is specifically that its college free speech rankings (and deplatforming database) are a complete mess with no real grounding in objective metrics, and yet they reflect a massive percentage of FIRE's contribution to the public discourse. 🧵
"Fake moral panic"

FIRE pointed problems out where it saw them. Your problem is with the people in office. "You shouldn't say anything that someone with bad intent should misuse even if it's right" is stupid position worth Erp consideration.
August 7, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Reposted by Alberto Cappellaro
If you aren’t familiar, Terence Tao is a Fields Medalist and arguably the most prominent and accomplished mathematician of his generation.

No one is safe, basically. The current administration will use any excuse to burn it all to the ground.
August 1, 2025 at 5:14 PM
It's good to see data basically confirming a labour-related intuition many had over the years: focusing on superstars is instrumental for policymakers, deploying shitty contracts for the most of us, under the guise of "meritocracy".
July 19, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Infuriating. The time to act was years ago, many were told not to get involved, "science should not be political" (often mentioning Soviet times as a scarecrow), and yet here we are.
July 19, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Reposted by Alberto Cappellaro
Silicon Valley’s alliance with Donald Trump was a mask off moment and showed the world we can’t depend on US tech companies.

For the past few months, I’ve been trying to get off US tech and I put together a guide so you find alternatives too. I hope you find it helpful!
Getting off US tech: a guide
I’m in the process of dropping US tech services. Here’s how I did it, and options you should consider.
www.disconnect.blog
July 18, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Dumbest people on Earth.
"I’ll go down this thread with GPT or Grok and I’ll start to get to the edge of what’s known in quantum physics and then I’m doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it’s vibe physics,” said Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber.

gizmodo.com/billionaires...
July 16, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Reposted by Alberto Cappellaro
Look, speaking as a physicist, it is hard for me to put into words how batshit crazy this is.
"I’ll go down this thread with GPT or Grok and I’ll start to get to the edge of what’s known in quantum physics and then I’m doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it’s vibe physics,” said Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber.

gizmodo.com/billionaires...
July 16, 2025 at 4:04 AM
Reposted by Alberto Cappellaro
If people think American scientists are somehow going to land in Europe, I've got news for you about the difference between millions and billions.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
July 4, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Additional pain and misery inflicted by Zuckerberg, this time upon hundreds of kids and their families. It really never ends.
June 29, 2025 at 8:34 PM